I got a message today that said:
"Hey Ryan, I know your father.
Did you know, you look just like your father?"
Oh, you know my father?
I don't know him at all, he never bothered.
I'm not the child he ever wanted.
But when I look in that mirror
And see his face, I wish I could waste myself.

I know you didn't know, it shows.
He talks like he was there, which isn't fair,
I receive a message once a year
"Happy birthday" I don't get why.
Just to say to himself he tried?
The only thing I can say are ours
Is every one of those mental scars
That get ripped open in his name.
Sixteen years so far of feeling lame.

You know my father?
Can you tell me...
Does he answer when you call?
When you write, does he answer at all?
You know my father?
That's nice to hear, I don't.

The closer you get to the truth,
The more lost you will become.
Search for answers, there's a chance your
Entity within yourself will be undone.
Following this rope where it may go
Learning later it led to a noose.
Still follow those animalistic instincts
Until you're in too deep,
Wondering what that path would show.

Pay attention as you walk this way,
The sunflowers all turn their flowerheads.
Don't dismiss them, instead listen,
heliotropism shows you've gone astray.
Like oysters following a carpenter until dead
To a Walrus they had been fed.
Look around, the trees all look the same
Look around, walking in circles again.

Ensnared in what you had to know
Each limb entangled, being pulled
Every secret revealed in a flash.
Curiosity took a knife to ****** the cat
But satisfaction brought him back,
Keep walking until you find your home.

She sits out on the sand
Stretching her wings out,
Watching the others fly over the land,
She doubts her ability to soar
Over the waves as they crash.
She's afraid to take that jump,
Worried everyone would just laugh.
She turns back.

Up on a strong birch branch
She looks into a self-made nest
Where three dreamy eyed children hatched
Providing them a life she wished she had,
Hoping they see she tries her best
In a place where rest isn't even rest.

She cries out to the sun
As it drifts out from where she lays
Wondering when the day would come
When she has the strength to fly away

You don't need a tall tower
With staircases twisting  for miles
Or cameras watching at every hour
Making sure you stay idle
To lock someone off and away,
Give all the fake freedom
Keeping them closely at bay
Hand them beautiful desires
With no emotion behind them,
Learning nothing gold can stay.

Hand off lots of paints and pens
Let them fall in love with an art
Then call it waste restricting passion.
Build them up to be flawless,
Put later to a mirror, showing hardness
In their weight, their love, their soul.
Treated like puzzles stealing just a piece
So they may never feel whole.

You don't need a cage to hold a prisoner
Not a single iron bar is needed
Just strip them of their worth
Until they sit stoic and defeated.

It started in the fiction section
Beginning with a trickle causing lights to flicker
From the floors below hitting the dictionaries,
The thesauruses became wet or rather dank
Those are synonyms I think
Unfortunately, no books to now know
As a storm in the library began to grow.

Children abandoned in their places,
Started tying books with their shoe laces
Setting sail, trying to hold their head up for a bit.
As a white whale's tail caused waves in a flick.
One parent yelled "everyone for themself!"
As his son coughed water asking for help
Books floating, amongst dirt and crude,
The third floor was beginning to flood.

The nonfiction was now non-existent,
Drifting past CDs that no one had listened.
Computers with a floppy drive were fried,
Electrically hissing through historical fiction.
The water came to hit the roof, the sky
Just then the walls crumbled
And I opened my eyes
To see I'd fallen asleep among the graphic novels
Where I had been known to hide.

Excuse me, sir
Can I buy a bit of time?
Death day is coming fairly soon
Looking at stars, I could read the signs
Slicing scythes through souls
To leave a hole in my whole being.
Without any modification still,
I feel a broken existence is all they're seeing.
That's not to say this life is shallow
But the targets I am aiming just end up breaking
When my points are sitting hollow.

Sir, if I could have a moment more,
My life fluid dripping from my heart
Puddling the bathroom floor.
No one tends to notice, no one stops
Today, I kick the bucket. Tomorrow, they just mop.
Forgetting to be human
To all other human beings,
Writing cries but no one's reading.

Please, if I could have a second...
Okay, no hand wavering, I get it.
Just let me close my eyes
Drifting into another spectrum.

The witching hours, we aren't afraid of those,
Heaven knows we pray for sleep
Only to dream of having dreams
Stuck in the darkness of this in between
Keeping consciousness but, honest this
Baggage has been weighing heavy.
These flood gates still hold steady,
Under pressure they may just break the levee,
Cracking slowly all the time,
For all the things attacking your mind,
I wrote this lullabye.

Streaming through insomniac days
That just fade out like memories
Barely there despite being awake.
Shaking the feeling of dealing
With the ghost I call myself
Until I can slip into my bed and melt.
Can I host a night where rest is felt?
Maybe not, yet still I try,
Writing myself a lullabye.

Two became three, three came four
Numbers shining from my dresser drawers
Taunting, laughing, trapping me in my head
I tried to write a lullabye
Only to find a nightmare instead.